The present interest in natural or health foods is the result of a growing public conviction that pure food laws are inadequate or are too laxly enforced to prevent the deleterious adulteration or contamination of packaged foods. In numerous instances, preservatives, colorings, flavorings and various other additives are used by food processors, whose effect upon the health of consumers is suspected, unknown or untested.
This trend to the use of natural or health foods has greatly increased public awareness of the fact that the meats of freshly-cracked nuts form almost perfect nutriments. Nature itself provides the meats with a nearly-perfect, sanitary, air-tight shell enclosure, while the meats themselves are rich in vitamins essential to health. as well as having excellent nutritional content.
Thus the consumption of nuts such as pecans, English walnuts, filberts, almonds, Brazil nuts, butternuts, hickory nuts and many other kinds, is rapidly increasing. While it is possible to purchase packaged nut meats, such products are open to the same objections as other packaged foods, namely, possible lack of sanitation in packaging, contaminants and objectionable preservatives. Hence there is an increasing and desirable tendency to crack nuts and extract the meats for immediate consumption, alone or as ingredients in foods being prepared for the table.
One disadvantage of this tendency is that the cracking of nuts in the home can be a messy procedure. The shells of most nuts, being hard and brittle, tend to fracture into pieces of various sizes, which can fly about in random manner. Thus, when nuts are cracked as by laying each on a firm base or anvil and striking it with a hammer, or when a conventional or prior art cracking implement is used, it usually results in the necessity for a subsequent clean-up job such as sweeping the floor and brushing off other horizontal surfaces such as chairs.
Reference is made to my U.S. Pat. No. 3,589,420, granted June 29, 1971, and showing a nut-cracking implement of which the present invention is a modified and improved version.